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on Wednesday January 30, 2013 @01:01PM
from the remember-me dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Research In Motion has whipped the curtain back from BlackBerry 10. The revamped operating system is widely perceived as RIM's best chance at staying relevant in a smartphone market dominated by Google Android and Apple's iOS. Once a significant player in mobility, RIM watched its earnings and market-share crumble over the past few years. BlackBerry 10 abandons the longtime BlackBerry user interface, centered on grids of icons, in favor of one built on the same QNX technology that powers RIM's PlayBook tablet. The BlackBerry 10 home-screen offers 'live tiles' that dynamically refresh with updated information, and RIM is playing up how users can move between apps and alerts by swiping and flicking the screen. Other features include BlackBerry Balance, which divides the 'personal' and 'corporate' sides of the phone, as well as an updated BlackBerry Messenger. More details in the article."
RIM also announced they are rebranding themselves as BlackBerry. If you like pictures, omfglearntoplay sent in an article that delivers. Gimmicks of the launch include hiring Alicia Keys as their "Global Creative Director."

Using the corporate tie in allows the corp to push apps and settings to the phone and wipe them upon termination. If I set my iphone up to pop my corp mail, its on my phone and they can't do anything about it when I quit. With the BB they can nuke the corp data from orbit. Still don't want them in my enterprise though. All of the pointed headed people asking what happened to their email and messaging the next time they have a 4 day world wide outage.

If I print my corporate email, it's on paper, and they can't do anything about it when I quit. Or export the data. Or photograph the screen.

You don't want to hand everybody the keys to the kingdom, but I feel like all the emphasis on securing smartphones is a bit like installing steel security doors when you've got loads of single-pane windows everywhere. The security chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and it's usually not hard to find a much bigger security deficiency that's worth targeting befor

I've had a BlackBerry since 2005 and I don't recall any 4-day outages. In fact, on the 2 or 3 occasions that it was out for a day or so I was only down for an hour or two, and if you read their press releases this makes sense as the outages rarely affect everyone. Similar things have happened with Apple, as I recall. However, when my phone was swiped from my pocket, I felt good knowing that all of sensitive data was safe. Just like with Carrier IQ was found installed on so many phones, it was not installed on BlackBerry. From my perspective, it is the iPhones and Android phones that are riddled with issues.

I've had a BlackBerry since 2005 and I don't recall any 4-day outages. In fact, on the 2 or 3 occasions that it was out for a day or so I was only down for an hour or two, and if you read their press releases this makes sense as the outages rarely affect everyone. Similar things have happened with Apple, as I recall.

I'm curious as to what you referring to. Apple (and Android mfg's) sells the hardware and doesn't provide the telecom service so I have no idea what kind of "outage" Apple could be responsible for like RIM is famous for.

"BlackBerry subscribers in the Americas may be experiencing intermittent service delays this morning..."

Also not clear is whether BIS or BES customers were affected. I'm a BIS customer, and I'm pretty sure my wireless Internet access comes from AT&T, not BlackBerry. Can't say the same for BES customers. I can also say that my phone will connect to the Internet through WiFi not only without a BlackBerry subscription, but even without a SIM card.

Incorrect. If you add your corporate Exchange account to your iphone, you are giving your Exchange admins the ability to wipe your device. I know this because the it happened to a friend of mine - the IT function at her company apparently had a spazz attack and remote wiped ALL the phones.

It's a feature users were asking for. It's not because you don't see value in it that there isn't value.

The feature protects your personnal data from you're work and vice versa. It "APPEARS" to cover the issue of mobile device security in work places where intellectual property is mission critical to protect. That just being a general overview. You can get more details on their web site.

If your company is involved in litigation and you have work email coming in to your personal device, then under FRCP (if in the US) your personal phone could be imaged and examined for relevant documents. With balance their is a complete separation of work and home.

If you get an IT job that requires a security clearance, it's very likely that you will have to deal with that "crazy dividing line." Corporate IT Security likes to be able to have full control over a device and its data when little things like national security are involved. One of the most reliable and less-intrusive ways to accomplish this is with some type of "personas" system, which has been successfully implemented by several different packages for many years.

This is also why I carry two phones, but by my own choice. I could use my corporate phone for everything, but I'd rather keep my personal life and my work life as separate as possible. Two separate phone numbers, two separate email accounts/clients, etc etc etc... Also, the mental separation is huge. When I go on vacation, I leave my corporate phone on my desk.

No it really doesn't. Their stock price is not based off of any fundamentals, merely opinion and short term speculation. Their competitive position has not changed and it remains unclear if consumers will buy their latest products in sufficient volume.

Last september/october it was around $6-$7 a share, now it is more than doubled.

So did SCO when they announced their lawsuit against IBM. Their stock price jumped and then steadily dropped as people realized they were doomed. Stock prices do not in the short term reflect objective facts about a company, merely opinion. If their stock continues to grow for the next 3 years then and only then will you have a valid argument.

Last september/october it was around $6-$7 a share, now it is more than doubled.

Based purely on "press," not on the product. The stock market became a game of stealing every penny that you can from the small investor, and not about anything in the realm of reality quite a while ago. Think of professional poker players. No different.

I am interested to see the Balance feature both from a user experience and technical perspective. Currently both the major platforms Droid and IOS simply do not really offer the features Enterprise security needs even when paired with an MDM solution; of if they do they do so in a way that will not be acceptable to end users in a BYOD environment.

We have been promised Droid VMs for two years now and seen nadda. The idea being you'd have a personal phone environment and a business phone environment. One

Yes I have evaluated Good and have some experience with it. Its certainly best of breed. No matter what other players like Zenprise, McAfee, pay Gartner to stick them in the same quadrant they just don't stack up.

Anyone looking for MDM solutions I strongly encourage you to eval Good and at least one of the others. Don't just compare feature charts, actually get both on a few different handhelds and run thru the situations. Lost device, employee exit, etc. I expect you will find Good to be a notch above

Looks like they are trying to compete directly with Apple and Samsung. Looks like around $650 in Canada ($150 with 3 year shackles.. which is about $500 credit towards a phone). If businesses go back to them, yeah it could work at that price (it's not as though they are paying more than an iPhone they are already supplying their sales guys with), but a bit cheaper would have given an extra push.

$359 Nexus 4 vs $650 Q10 for me as a consumer.. the Nexus wins out for sure. Then I can buy the next Nexus as soon as it comes out and hop to the next cheapest carrier at that time.

I didn't read anything about it being locked, but I assume it's carrier locked (that's the norm in Canada). That's BS for travelling. Maybe big corps don't mind paying roaming fees, but I tend to grab a cheap sim card any time I cross the boarder and save myself hundreds in roaming and data fees.

Admittedly I'm not the target market, but at this point I'd think it'd be best for BB to appeal to as broad a market as possible. If they could profit at $350/phone then they should saturate the market, rather than pricing high now, then dropping the price like the Playbook. Nothing makes your product look more unappealing than staging it as a premium product then dropping the price because it doesn't live up to the premium status.

I think this is totally wrong... you have to think like a manager or executive to understand their market. Until laptops were commiditized (sp) the Thinkpad had a certain caché that said "I am busy and important, don't f with me". Now that technical focus is on phones an executive has few options. Iphones are nice but the guy serving him latte with an earring in his nose has one, + the Apple tie ins and consumerism make the phone feel like a toy. The Samsung is nice, but his gamer nephew and the smelly

BB isn't a BMW. They'd like to be one, but their new phone is more like the first generation of Hyundai Genesis priced like a BMW. Only difference being they had some history but became irrelevant, so basically worse off than someone new to a segment. And contrary to your argument they are trying to argue features/specs as a reason to buy not quality, mystique or exclusivity.

My point was that they can't afford to just target business anymore. People are happily plugging away on whatever they have now. Th

Admittedly I'm not the target market, but at this point I'd think it'd be best for BB to appeal to as broad a market as possible. If they could profit at $350/phone then they should saturate the market, rather than pricing high now, then dropping the price like the Playbook. Nothing makes your product look more unappealing than staging it as a premium product then dropping the price because it doesn't live up to the premium status.

They tried that already. Their entry-level devices broke down early (hardware and/or software issues, e.g. BB Storm), damaging their reputation for quality and reliability.

Unlike the big Android manufacturers, BB (the company) doesn't have many other products to fall back on. Their BB Curve line is about $300 without contract from Rogers, and their margins on it are probably very thin. Even at $0 on contract, it did a poor job saturating the market.

Yeah qnx is cool (I worked in embedded and can't disagree with that), but them getting their qnx based OS going has taken forever and a day. Doing something on top of Linux (or userspace on top of android) would have gotten them out quicker.

I used to have a Blackberry Curve. I now have an iPhone 4S. I like my iPhone, but it has some definite drawbacks over my old BB Curve. The Curve's battery would last for a week or more, my iPhone I'm lucky if the battery lasts 2 days between charges. The Curve seemed to be able to get e-mails without incurring roaming charges, when I traveled I could inexpensively text, phone and email. With my iPhone I get big bills, since if Wifi isn't available I have to turn on data roaming to download email. I also found the email and the keyboard much more productive on the BB. If BB still has these advantages, I'll probably go back to BB. If now the battery sucks and it runs up roaming, then I'll probably go to the next Apple phone.

The BB unveiling was streamed live on CNBC and I watched it. Some observations...

1) The CEO - Thorsten Heins - has absolutely zero charisma. I understand that English probably isn't his first language but he didn't look very comfortable during the presentation. Yeah, we're there to see the phone but getting someone with some presentation skills would have helped.2) All that aside, they have done a very nice job on the phone. True multitasking. Personal and Business sandboxes. Full encryption. Nice screen. BBM now has a video client similar to Skype.3) BBM video - was it just me or was the audio not working for the guy in London? The video looked fine but I don't recall hearing him say anything.4) Apps - I'm tired of hearing about "apps" all time time. Look - no matter what phone you get you're going to have access to more apps than you can shake a stick at. Everyone (Apple, Android, Microsoft, Blackberry) has a collection of about 50 apps that most people want or need. The rest of it is a combination of copies of those 50, niche products, and utter shit. Everyone has Angry Birds, Skype, WhatsApp, Evernote, Dropbox, etc. Just get the phone you like and don't worry about the apps.5) Good move releasing a phone with and without a physical keyboard. Having had a BB in the past I have to admit that having a physical keyboard is a nice feature. If you don't type on it that much you probably don't need it.6) I think they said it was going to cost $149. That undercuts Apple and Samsung by $50.7) No mention of memory, storage, processor, camera specs, etc. I think that was a mistake. That kind of stuff is important to a lot of people (well, me anyway). It would be nice to know if it has an SD card. How does it stack up against the iPhone or Galaxy 3? If they want people to switch they have to show why the BB is a better phone.

It looks like the BB 10 specs are the same or better than the iPhone 5 at least. It only comes with 16GB storage, but upgradable with a card. Faster processors on BB 10 and a few more pixels on the screen (if you get the big one) and better resolution.

My biggest thing is the CAMERA! Not the specs so much, but the software. You take one picture, it gives you a couple of seconds to scroll through and pick the best picture during that time... so no more blinks and yawns in my damn pictures. THANK YOU!

I've never been a BB fan (never owned one) but I was given an iPhone and a BB10 beta to play with. The BB10 feels way better, and I mean waaaay better. With the iPhone it feels like you spend most of the time clicking on the menu button moving to another app. On the BB10 you swipe left or up and as if by magic all your other app(s) are there, still running.

The funny thing is, Apple actually implemented multitouch app switching way back in iOS 4.3, but they haven't enabled it on the iPhone—presumably because smartphone screens are a bit small for their 3+ finger gestures.

You can use Activator (available on Cydia) to enable it, though you'll have to wait for the new jailbreak coming out in a few days. Speaking of jailbreaking, if you like BB10's app previews you could give Auxo or other app switcher replacements/enhancements a try as well.

I've never been a BB fan (never owned one) but I was given an iPhone and a BB10 beta to play with. The BB10 feels way better, and I mean waaaay better. With the iPhone it feels like you spend most of the time clicking on the menu button moving to another app. On the BB10 you swipe left or up and as if by magic all your other app(s) are there, still running.

To be fair, the iPad has had those same multi-finger gestures for quite some time. For some reason, though, the iPhone never got that feature.

You're correct that most decent apps will be available, but there will always be exceptions. There will always be some #!$( developers who refuse to program for more than one platform. I'm still discussed by some of the apps that haven't come over from iPhone to Android. I guess the iPhone developers don't want to double their market.

Making an app available on Android generally doesn't double the revenue they were making on iOS. There have been a number of iPhone apps that have ported to Android and found that their support costs go up but they don't make nearly as much revenue. There are certainly exceptions but they tend to be big apps that can get a lots of views of ads, like Angry Birds.

Porting from iOS to Android is far from trivial. Plus Android users will post bad reviews for apps that look too much like iOS. So you have to redo

I've been in the market for a pedometer for awhile now. I really like the Fitbit and Jawbone offerings, but the Fitbit Android app doesn't support Bluetooth synching (half the reason for the app), and the Jawbone doesn't support Android or PC at all. Both have Android support listed as "Coming soon", but they've had it listed too long to be comforting. I guess Fitbit just announced a tentative date, but they're only going to support the S3 at first. I've got a Razr M, which has the hardware to do the co

As they (both sides) should. The Google Maps app's UI for example is a jarring change from many other iOS apps. Call it superfluous eye candy to have rounded ends on a text box instead of plain right angled corners, or smoothly shaded tabs for different functions, but visually the current GMaps, while perfectly functional and I use it a fair bit, just doesn't look right when run in iOS.

A different example: Apple was rightly criticized for basically porting the Mac's text rendering engine and some of the Mac

I had a blackberry before my Galaxy S2.It did everything I needed just fine, I moved on to get the larger screen and a better web browser, not because of any shortage of apps.

As far as demanding uncompressed images from a cell phone camera, that's laughable. The camera quality, while improving is so bad that there really is little benefit to RAW. If you want RAW, get a real camera.

The camera on a smartphone has evolved to having near quality of a professional camera. That said it is NOT a professional camera. When I take a picture with my phone I want it to capture the moment decently and for the size of a dime they go far beyond what anyone realistically needs. If I wanted amazing quality photos I would use a camera with proper optical zoom, etc. Basing a smart phone on 1 feature of which should not be primary is hardly advisable. That would be like not buying the perfect car because the horn sound isn't a perfect pitch. Sure you use it and some days more than others, but it is not core functionality and should be weighted as such.

Resolution doesn't make up for the small lenses in any small camera. Ask any photographer. More Glass = Better Picture. It gives you better aperture and more light. No chips can make up for the lack of light in uber small lenses, point&shoots included. Therefore no smartphone will ever have the quality of a pro camera. Resolution sure, but those pixels will be garbage.

"more glass" means a wider front lens with the ability to capture more light.

I have an 85mm F1.4 lens originally designed for 35mm. The front element is 72mm across. No matter how good the lens is on a phone (and some are *very* good) it won't be able to gather as much light as this lens.

When shopping for a new lens, you want as much aperture as you can afford

That is not true, it depends on the style of shooting.

For portraits or low light work having a really wide aperture is nice. You get a very narrow DOF, or the ability to shoot in really low light while keeping shutter speeds up.

But the tradeoff is color fringing. I have an 85mm f/1.4, and a 70mm f/2.8 - for any kind of landscape work I will use the 70mm every time. It simply has far less CA, and the ability to shoot macro (something

Why are you using a tele for landscape? I generally use my 24mm 2.8 (ancient manual Sigma) for landscape, and I've had my eye on a 15mm prime for a bit too. For landscape you want wide (or ultra wide), for models you want tele, for street shooting you want "normal" (40-50mm, though I prefer 24-28mm for this too).

Fringing depends on the lens, not how large the aperture is. Worst case, you have to stop the 1.4 down to 2.8, to clean up the picture and regulate CA, and generally a fast lens hits the sweat-sp

Most phones have a very small sensor, while digital SLRs have much larger ones. All else being equal, a larger sensor can sense more light with less noise. Yes, you're not going to fit the 40mm sensor of an SLR into a camera where it's usually around 3mm.

There is still a big gulf between the quality of smartphone cameras and professional cameras, but it doesn't always matter. Instagram and Facebook are both pretty lo-fi anyway. Once you view the images at 1920x1080 or try to print then A4 size you quickly notice the limitations though. For that a compact Micro 4/3 camera is ideal.

The lens on *most* camera phones aren't that good. There's only one notable exception, Nokias 808. Which is beyond the quality of (all?) compact cameras, and rivals bridge cameras for still image quality.

What, because it won't have a level application that doesn't work? Who gives a damn. How many apps do you need anyway??

iPhone is overated. This coming from the owner of an iPhone. The only reason I purchased an iPhone is that there was no good carrier support for Android, BB didn't appeal to me and MS didn't know what they were doing yet.

"The BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps supports Android 2.3.3 applications" and this should speed-up the number of available apps for BB. Android 2.3.3 features that aren't supported are listed here [blackberry.com].

The win8 phones that I've seen are terrible. They are buggy, have weird behaviour, and a ghost town of an app store. My assumption is that BB10 devices will at least share the latter of those problems and I'm tempted to recommend android, but it might be worth it to wait and see.

Well I haven't used to BB10, but aside from that if you're in the US then the Nexus 4 is the easy winner. Great and cheap, no contract nonsense. The only downside is that it's rather large, this could potentially be an issue if you're sensitive to that.

This is like debating McDonalds vs Burger King in a story about a taco stand on main street that served 5 customers yesterday at lunch time. I think the three blackberry users still left are going to get annoyed at you guys for going off topic.

You forgot to add "... in the long run". Market share without profits can be very useful if the purpose is to drive other companies out of the market over a relatively short time period. Ask Amazon. However if a company is competing solely on price but cannot drive others out of the industry (think airline industry) then competition will drive most/all of the profits out of the industry. Apple doesn't compete primarily on price whereas Windows PC makers primarily do. If Apple were to dump OS X and sell Windows on their computers instead, their profit margins would evaporate faster than you could say "shareholder lawsuit". Same if they dumped iOS for Android.

RIM knows this and that is why they aren't going to Android. If they do there is nothing to make them stand out from Samsung, HTC and the rest and their profit margins are very likely to disappear.

Will this fucking lie ever die, or does it have to be KILLED WITH FIRE?

However, LG posted an operating profit of Won107bn in the fourth quarter, up 25 per cent from a year earlier, on record smartphone sales of 8.6m units. The mobile phone business recorded a quarterly operating profit of Won56.3bn.

Will this fucking lie ever die, or does it have to be KILLED WITH FIRE?

Except: that's not killing it. Your quote talks about LG's operating profit, and their smartphone sales, but not drawing a direct link between the two. That's like taking Sony's overall profit numbers and saying the Playstation 3 has been a money winner for them.

LG credited demand for smartphones that run on faster "LTE" networks, which are taking off in South Korea, Japan and the United States. It sold 14.4 million mobile phones during the three months, with smartphone sales accounting for half of the volume. More than 70 percent of its mobile revenue came from smartphone sales.

Apple is a dominant player in the mobile OS and device market. There are many metrics by which to define "dominant", and Apple and their products excel at most of them. The only one where they are reasonably behind Android on is total unit market share, and even on that, their weakest metric, Apple is the #2 player, and a major one at that.

To say the OS isn't popular is to hide your head in the sand while shouting "total unit market share is the only thing that matters" over and over.

I agree, a slide-out keyboard would've been really nice. Even tweaking the size / form factor of the keyboard models would've been nice. It's hard to believe the keyboard one is a new device, especially next to the Z10. I don't want BB to start having dozens of models again though.

I have to agree. I was hoping there would be a new BB with some type of innovative full pull-out keyboard (not the old thumbing below-screen style). Now I know I will be sticking to Android OS on LG/Samsung/Motorola. I really prefer BB but just can't get into these full-touch screen devices with all the long technical emails/texts I send.

I think they will have a fighting chance as long as the Android compatibility works well. I'm skeptical of this because Android apps don't even work that consistently across different Android handsets. But I guess we'll have to wait and see. If the apps work, and they have quality hardware (good battery, good signal, good specs, doesn't break) at a competitive price, then I could see a lot of people going for a BlackBerry again.

Well, don't you think you're so smart telling me I was doing it wrong. Of course we used custom policies. We pushed all kinds of crap over the years, including in-house apps. Because, ya know, it's a lot of fun to know how many people have been out skiing all day or what the f&b yield was. Even disabled a few devices over the years. I will never, ever miss BES.

Now we've switched to a BYOD policy for about 75% of our employees. On the expense side, we're really saving a lot of money and employees a

The whole point of capitalism is that you have multiple companies competing to serve the customer. And you want less of that? A nice monopoly maybe?

In any case, I suggest you have a good look at the underlying OS, and at the developer tools (Ripple for example, is the W3C's recommended tool for testing web apps, not just BB10 web apps). There is a lot going on under the hood that makes BB10 useful.

From the tests done (and in my experience) the Z10 has the most standards-compliant HTML 5 mobile browser,

The world doesn't wait for or revolve around the USA. If the UK carriers can launch tomorrow and Canadian carriers can launch in just a few days then there is no one to blame but the US carriers themselves.

If you really read the news you should have seen that a version with a keyboard was also announced, It will be released shortly after the all touch version.Also Blackberry always had a varied range of models available in different price points, one would expect this to continue meaning there should eventually be more models in higher and lower price points. The BB10 OS is based on QNX as has been reported elsewhere. This is a secure OS used in mission critical applications in the automobile industry, cons